Matthew Mew

//Portfolio

//Portfolio

//Portfolio

//Portfolio

//Portfolio

//Portfolio

//Portfolio

//Portfolio

//Portfolio

//Portfolio

//Portfolio

//Portfolio

The last week has been spent figuring out, designing and prototyping my vision for an automated, centrally controlled, digital manufacturing facility. To start with it will begin with just one 1.5x3m CNC machine, but it’s designed to be stackable and locally controlled.

I started out by putting together a small machine using Makerslide. This is a system of aluminium extrusion neatly built in rail slides. If you’re in the UK and you want to buy some, I recommend eShapeoko.

I then set about figuring how to control the thing. I’ve been using arduino’s for years so when I read about grbl, I got my hands on an arduino, grbl shield and 4 stepper drivers. After wiring everything up I had the CNC moving as I sent codes from my macs command line. I played with a few gcode senders before discovering the wonderful Chilipeppr. Chillipeppr is a mostly javascript interface that talks to your computers hardware. It comes with a  serial port JSON server that when run, allows your Chilipeppr to talk to your hardware form the browser.

After getting my head around that, it ran beautifully. I 3D printed a sprung pen holder for the CNC and ran a few test runs. I even “automated mothers day” by designing a card in inkscape, converting the vector into gcode using inkscapes gcode converter plugin and “drawing” it with a biro.

The next step was to figure out how I could make this system scalable as through serial communication I am limited to controlling one CNC per PC. I would need a dedicated PC for each CNC so I got my hands on the cheapest PC one can buy, a raspberry pi 3. The pi 3 also now comes with built in wifi and bluetooth chips that would come in handy later.

Set up wasn’t too hard, I 3D printed a pi case and mounted it to the edge of the CNC. I connected the arduino, a keyboard and mouse and used my hdmi tv as a screen. After downloading the serial port JSON server specifically for pi, I connected to the controller without too many problems. I could now control the CNC from the pi.

This was a step in the right direction for sure, I could now scale up the machinery without the large outlay of a new expensive PC per CNC. But at the moment each CNC had to be controlled on it’s respective pi, and therefore each pi needed a screen, keyboard and mouse.

This is when I started experimenting with Chilipepprs remote server functionality. When running the JSON server on the pi, it is possible to connect to the same network (this is why the wifi was useful!) with a different machine and send commands to pi remotely. Using this approach, one machine can control many CNC’s through the web browser, wirelessly over the network.

The next step is to write a script on the pi that starts the JSON server running on start-up as at the moment, every restart requires me to attach a screen and mouse and run the server manually.

Last night I had the pleasure of meeting around 40 University of Bristol Alumni entrepreneurs. Most of these guys had well and truly “made it”, if wealth is the way you’re measuring success. Whenever i’m in a room of entrepreneurs I notice some qualities not often found in other circles. Here’s my takeaways from last nights interactions.

1. Take the risk.

All ventures have an element of risk in them. Working on a product where the first hope of sales is a few months away is crazy to most people. But if you have the itch then you should not let the risk stop you.

2. An employee cannot start something great.

If you want to start a company you’re going to have to do it yourself. It doesn’t just take a skill set, it takes passion and an immense drive. An employee wont share that same level of passion and so you’re going to have to do it yourself.

3. Trade in creation, not in stocks.